In the past few decades, the petroleum industry has invested heavily in the development of marine seismic survey techniques that yield knowledge of subterranean formations located beneath a body of water in order to find and extract valuable mineral resources, such as oil. High-resolution seismic images of a subterranean formation are essential for quantitative interpretation and improved reservoir monitoring. Some marine seismic surveys are carried out with an exploration-seismology vessel that tows a seismic source and one or more streamers that form a seismic data acquisition surface below the surface of the water and over a subterranean formation to be surveyed for mineral deposits. Other marine seismic surveys can be carried out with ocean bottoms cables (“OBCs”) that lie on or just above the sea floor. The OBCs are connected to an anchored exploration-seismology vessel that may include a seismic source. A typical exploration-seismology vessel contains seismic acquisition equipment, such as navigation control, seismic source control, seismic receiver control, and recording equipment. The seismic source control causes the seismic source to produce acoustic impulses at selected times. Each impulse is a sound wave that travels down through the water and into the subterranean formation. At each interface between different types of rock, a portion of the sound wave is transmitted, and another portion is reflected back toward the body of water. The streamers and OBCs include a number of seismic receivers or sensors that detect pressure and/or velocity wavefields associated with the sound waves reflected back into the water from the subterranean formation. The pressure and velocity wavefield data is processed to generate images of the subterranean formation.
However, when the receivers are separated by more than half the reflected wavefield wavelengths, the recorded wavefield is spatially aliased. For example, in towed streamer acquisition, the streamers are typically separated by distances that often result in spatially aliased recorded wavefields. As a result, images of a subterranean formation along directions perpendicular to the streamers are not reliable. Those working in the petroleum industry continue to seek systems and methods that can be used to process pressure and velocity wavefield data to avoid the spatially aliased aspect of the recorded wavefield.